


16 days (before she forgets)

by grendelthegood



Category: Carnival Row (TV)
Genre: F/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-14 11:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20600108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grendelthegood/pseuds/grendelthegood
Summary: Vignette's fallen in love with this man before. She's only forgotten.Four years before the sacred library, they meet on a hill before the holy day of Saam-fuin, the Summer’s Sleep.





	1. 16 Days; Philo, age 26

**Author's Note:**

> Saam-fuin [Sam-HEIN] - literally translates to Summer's Sleep

_(Sixteen days before she forgets, on the holy hill of the sun-stones, she curls a knife against my throat and threatens to kill me.)_

-

I don’t move my gun; I fire the moment a fae flies into my scope. 

I reload. I take a breath. I steady my aim and, when a pair of wings clip into my vision, I squeeze the trigger. I reload again. The bullet casing clicks out, all heat and smoke, ghosting over my cheek. I take aim and fire again, and again, and again.

Pact fae had ambushed a caravan of Burguish fae, and our Dragoon happened upon them enroute to Fort Tarlington. The caravan was surrounded and outnumbered, but stone flint knives don’t do much against long-range rifles. The Pact fae flee soon enough.

“Everyone alright?” Darius beside me rides out of the line of trees and into the clearing. I nudge my horse to follow.

The fae shy back, so I tuck my rifle away and say, “We’re Burguishmen.”

“13th Light Dragoon.” Commander Bagstock rides up behind me. “Where is this caravan headed?”

The fae look at each other, then at the detachment of Burgish soldiers that filter slowly, surely, out from the dark of the trees. From underneath the rounded hood of the caravan, a fae pipes up. “The sun-stones, for Saam-fuin.”

Commander Bagstock grimaces. “Hell’s that.”

“A festival, sir.” I supply. “For the coming winter, I believe.”

“A festival. In the middle of a Martyr damned war.”

Darius shrugs. “Suppose the fae need some way of relieving stress, sir.”

“I believe,” I cut in, “that the sun-stone hills are quite near to Fort Tarlington.”

“And why the hell do you even know all this, Sergeant.”

I look out at the trees, at nothing at all. The Commander is forever irritable about all things fae. “Heard about it in passing, sir.”

The Commander snorts. He looks at me, judges me, then turns back to the caravan of fae, of men and women and children all awaiting his judgement. Then he clicks his tongue. Then he says from the height of his horse, “My men of the 13th Light Dragoon will escort you all to the Fort. You’re safe, now.”

The fae sigh. The air lightens. So, together with the caravan in our midst, we set off once more for the fort.

Along the way, Darius rides up beside me and sniggers. “Heard it in passing, eh?”

“Maybe I did.”

“Maybe you did.” He smiles, and says nothing else. 

-

Fort Tarlington is kempt, with quaint gardens for greens and herbs, with a sturdy stone wall that surrounds the grounds. It is by the sea. The air is peeled fresh with the scent of salt.

We’re given orders to rest because we’ve been travelling for near a week-long. But the air is bright and the waves are loud, and the cry of seagulls above my head puts something like wind in my chest, so after I put my horse to the stables and clean my rifle, I take to the grounds instead. There is no resting for me.

I find my way to the sun-stone hills.

The beginnings of a great pyre has already been built in the center of the ring of stones. I know it is for a bonfire, but I don’t know the significance. I don’t know why the stones are called sun-stones; they are pox-scarred and faded in colour, looking more like the moon than the sun.

I smile up at the height of them, taller than three or four men. I pull off my leather glove and lay my hand on a crater, to feel the grain of the stone.

And then a knife is at my throat. The edge of it is curled in.

“Easy.” I do not gulp. If I did, the blade would knick my skin. “Easy, now.”

The knife does not let. So I say, low, “Who might you be?”

The pressure against my knife shifts. Someone, a woman, says, “I’m a sparrowguard of Mima Aine, and you are trespassing on holy ground.”

I pause. I raise my hands slowly in surrender. “I see. I did not realize, miss.” Still ever slowly, I shift to turn, to face the woman. “Now if you would kindly stay your blade, I’ll be on my merry way.”

Her grip tightens on my collar. She snarls. “You’ve desecrated what is holy, and you want to ‘go on your merry way’? Faan-troigh, the lot of you.”

“What else is there to do?”

“I gut you here and now.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

She presses the knife closer. The edge stings against my skin, and my blood is pricked loose. “And why the hell not.”

I wince and say, “Because I’m whatever you called me. A Faan-troigh.”

“What?”

“I’m faan-troigh. You wouldn’t want my blood to sully your holy grounds, would you?”

She pauses. She’s tense. I can feel the heat of her gaze on me as she deliberates, as she seethes. So I say, “I’ll take penance. How’s that?”

Her wings flicker. I feel the wind of them move. I say, “I stepped onto holy ground without permission, so I’ll make up for it. Take a penalty. Make amends.”

“Or I just take you down the hill and end you there.”

“And risk creating tension between your people and mine? My Commander might not take too kindly to one of his Sergeants being gutted after arriving at the fort.”

Her wings beat again, and it’s an angry thing, a frustrated thing. She shoves me, and lets me go. The point of her knife is still an accusation at my throat as she faces me. I turn fully to her. Her eyes, glinting, are as sharp as the blade in her hand.

Her wings are fanned. Her shoulders are squared. She is beautiful. 

“Your name?” She demands.

I touch my neck. The thin cut still stings. “Rycroft Philostrate.” I pause. I do not think she will answer, but I try anyways with, “And you are?”

“The last face you’ll see,” she juts up her chin, “if you try to run, or if you try anything like this again.”

“Rest assured, miss. I won’t be doing either.”

She says nothing. Her expression is steely; the line of her jaw is hard. After a bloated silence, and after a narrowing of her eyes, she sheathes her weapon. I smile.

I will live to see another day.

-

Her Mima — Mima Aine — sentences me to manual labour for the cause of Saam-fuin. I am to consecrate my body and to gather wood for the pyre. I am to stand guard on certain nights on the hill, outside the ring of the sun-stones, to guard against unholy spirits of the dark.

The Commander is not happy. Darius, standing behind the Commander, laughs into his fist.

“It’s only for a couple of days, sir.” I stand at attention before Commander Bagstock. 

“These fae have no right ordering about my men.”

“I _did_ trespass onto holy ground, sir.”

“To hell with their holy ground. Piss on a rock or a tree and they call it holy. It’s pagan idolatry.”

I tick my eyes down, but my attention holds strong, tall. “Perhaps so, sir. But to keep the peace, this may be the best course of action.”

“How many days?”

“It’s sixteen to the festival, but I believe they only require me for five days or so.”

“God’s noose.”

I stay silent. Darius, finally finished with laughing, clears his throat. “The next shipment isn’t due ‘til a week in, sir. This is downtime. And I can cover for the Sergeant.”

“Of course you’ll cover for him.” The Commander pinches the bridge of his nose, then sighs. “What a mess. You tell the rest of the men to stay away from that hill. And bring the Mima here. She and I are having words.”

“Right away, sir.”

Commander Bagstock nods and dismisses me. Darius gives me a look; he’s still holding a ghost of a smile. I try not to smile back, or to laugh. The Commander is in no mood. I turn and exit the room, back out to the grounds underneath the bright of the sky. I pull in breath. I let it out. 

The Mima’s hut is on the outskirts of the fort, and as I make my way over, as my mind wanders, I am reminded of the cut against my throat. It no longer stings.

I am reminded of the eyes that cut. The memory of those eyes sting on, and on.


	2. 12 Days; Vignette, age 24

_(Twelve days before I forget, under the stars by the shadow of the sun-stones, he reads me a book from memory.)_

-

It’s been three days since the faan-troigh started working for us, for the sake of Saam-fuin, and for the sake of the sin he’s committed. 

He’s a hardy enough worker. Puts a tree to work and gets the lumber out quick and clean, though we’re the ones that pile up what he cuts onto the pyre, since we don’t allow him to cross the ring of the sun-stones into holy ground. 

He doesn’t mind; it’s less work for him. He lingers by the edge of the circle, toeing the line of what’s allowed, and watches with his hands behind his back as the pyre grows big and bigger.

Mima Aine’s told me to keep a close eye on him, to make sure he does the work that’s been allotted to him. So I watch him. From the heights of a tree’s branch I watch him, or by the shadow of a boulder near the glen I watch him. He’s ever only dressed in a pair of sturdy boots and trousers, and a sleeveless undershirt. It clings to his back as he works, as he sweats. The sweat paints the muscles of his arms slick.

He does the work that’s been allotted to him, and more. Faan-troigh aren’t hollow boned like us, and I think because of it, they can work harder, longer. He picks up the lumber others leave behind, and takes on the load of others so that there’s no need for a second or third trip back to the woods.

The others are weary, of course. This is a man, a Burguish soldier. To us, the Burguish look like pitiful deformed things, naked of back and weak of soul. But he smiles as he works. He does not complain. When he looks up at me wherever I am — on a branch or by a stone — he lifts a hand and waves. 

My return wave is always a scowl.

“You planning on helping?” He asks, one time.

“It’s not my job.”

“Ah. And what is your job?”

“To watch you. To make sure you do what you’re supposed to.”

“I see. Then how am I doing on that front?”

His undershirt is plastered wet to the planes and valleys of his body. His dark hair is wind-hewn. He is holding back a smile, and the curve of it itches over my skin.

So I look away and say, only, “Passable.” 

He says nothing. I can hear his smile nonetheless in the silence.

Today, the fourth day, the second last day of his indentured servitude, I climb up the holy hill in the dark of the night to find him standing tall outside the ring. He’s stood on an outcrop of stone with his head tilted up. He’s taking in all the lights of the night, all the winks and blinks of the stars.

I take to the air, briefly, and land beside him. He looks over at me, and even in the relative dark, I can tell he smiles.

“Making sure I do my job again?”

“That’s right.”

“I have to say, your job is a lot harder than mine.”

“A lot less tolerable, that’s for sure.” I turn and sit on the outcrop with my wings to him. The man — Rycroft Philostrate, he had said — laughs.

“You’ll be free of me by tomorrow’s time.”

“Thank the gods.”

“Though I was starting to think that maybe we were becoming friends.”

My wings twitch, confused. “And what could have possibly given you _that_ idea?”

“Your eyes.”

“What?”

“You don’t watch me like I’m prey anymore, for one.”

I say nothing, not for a long while. Eventually, I say, “I don’t watch you at all.”

“No? Even when it’s your job to?”

“I don’t watch you more than I need to. And when I do, I watch you as a warden watches their prisoner.”

He hums. “You have anything you like to do, Miss?”

I pause. “What?”

“You know. Hobbies. Things you do during your downtime.” I know he can tell that I do not understand, because he says, “You just seem very dedicated to your work.”

“I am.”

“With very little time for anything else.”

“There is no ‘downtime’ from sparrowguarding.”

“And sparrowguarding is....”

“We’re personal bodyguards of the Mima. Mima Aine works for the royal court.”

“And that’s very impressive.”

“And also extremely vital. I’ve no time for _hobbies_.”

“I see.” I watch the dark of his silhouette bob in a nod. The both of us fall silent. Crickets string their song. Down the hill and in the distance, a group of men roar and laugh in a tavern. 

Then Rycroft says, light, “You like books?”

“What?”

“Books. I like books.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I think it would do you a world of good to pick up the hobby of reading books.”

“I read.”

“Recently?”

I scowl. “What does it matter?”

“I could only bring one book with me from the Burgue. Read it more than a dozen times. The pages are all yellowed. There’s an unholy dent in the middle of the book ‘cause I’ve had to fold it into my pocket more than a couple of times.”

“You’re,” I pause, “running your mouth tonight.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I’m afraid of the dark.”

I snort. I realize, in that moment, that I’m laughing at — with — a faan-troigh. “And what the hell do you want me to do about it?”

When I look up, the man is looking back at me. The cut of his smile glints in the moonlight. “Tell me a story?”

“So you can bastardize it when you go back to your Burgue?” I scoff.

“Alright. Alright. I’ll tell _you_ a story.”

“Trying to kill your warden through boredom?”

“You don’t know if it’ll be a boring story.”

“Knowing you Burgue, it’ll be a story that romanticizes colonialism.” 

Of all things, he pauses. The pause stuns. I look back at him again, eyes wide. “Are you serious?”

“Well—”

“You fecking leggers.”

“Listen. The story only starts out like one. But—”

“—it gets better, is that it.”

“It does!”

“Ha!” My bark carries. In the far distance, far enough that the sound is a small small thing, a wolf howls. “Then I suppose you’d better prove it, ‘cause right now, you’re making a mess of it.”

“Have you got a light?”

“Does it look like I’ve got a light?”

“I’ll need light to read.”

“Didn’t you just say you read the story more than a dozen times.” My wings flutter. The rhythm of them is a challenge, like the challenge of my gaze over my shoulder, like the challenge I toss to him with: “You don’t have it memorized by now?”

He watches me. I watch him. The challenge hangs between us. 

In the end, he sighs. It is a loud, theatrical sigh. “Fine,” he says. “But I’m sitting for this. Is that alright with you, O Warden?”

“It is permitted,” I say, with my nose in the air. I’m trying not to smile, or to laugh.

There’s a chill to the night. The air is crisp. Rycroft eases into a sit, and his body by my side radiates warmth. It is enough that my wings fan an inch and some, just to brush up against the heat. He does not know it, and I do not mention it.

And so like this, side by side in the chill of the dark under the wink of the stars, a Burguish soldier tells me a story — about a man fed up with the world, a man who vaults to the moon, a man who meets a woman and falls in love.


	3. 8 days; Philo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer: war and violence and all that jazz

_(Eight days before she forgets, with my bloody lip and wounded shoulder, she teaches me the magics of her people.)_

-

I wake to the plaster of my roof collapsing over me, and to the whistle of bombs falling, and to the howling of wolves.

I lurch out of the rubble of my bed, only to be buried. The wall shatters. Stone is ground to dust, and when I swallow it, cough over it, it is as thick as flour. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Somehow, to the ringing of my ears and the rocking of my vision, I find my rifle. I find a hole to crawl out from. I exit out into the light.

The Pact have attacked. It must be a guerilla force, because we’ve heard nothing of such a group in such a capacity moving behind our lines. 

It doesn’t matter. When my eyes adjust to the light, I straighten, and take aim. When I see their colours, I fire.

I make it to the walls where I take cover and reload. I’m hollaring orders over the spray of bullets and the roar of detonations, but I don’t quite comprehend what I’m saying, not really. I’m moving on autopilot. Reinforce the rear gates, maybe. Get a medic, maybe. There’s a buzz to my skin and a fire like lightning in my bones, and it burns through me and out of me, and I can think only breathe, aim, fire.

A marrok — pink of skin and dusted with hair — rams through the gate. It rents through the wood full of splinters and leaps onto a soldier, and tears his throat out. And with its greedy maw wet and full of teeth and blood, it bounds up the steps of the rampart to where I am tucked against the stone, against the shadows.

There is no time to take aim. There is only time to swing my rifle around.

My finger misses the trigger. I cannot fire. The marrok snarls and leaps and I brace my gun above me, but the monster’s weight is a thing I did not, could not, fathom. The joint of my arm pops out of my shoulder’s socket. My grip slips. I roar, because I know I am about to die.

An arrow punctures into the marrok’s neck. Blood sprays. It is enough.

I haul in my rifle and jam it back out, bayonet end leading, under and into the beast’s jaw. It whines. It twitches. I kick its legs out from under it, and with a heave, I push it over onto its back. Its eyes roll white. It dies.

I am panting. My ears are still ringing. There’s heat drumming and drumming over my dislocated shoulder, but I cannot stop. Another hail of arrows fly over me, at a string of Pact men climbing over the walls. I grit my teeth and, fingers slick with blood, reload my rifle. I look over. I am searching. I need to know where the arrows are coming from.

It’s the woman. It’s the sparrowguard with the eyes that cut.

I still don’t know her name.

She’s hovering above the ground, away from the ramparts, and she’s firing and firing with her teeth bared like a tiger. If the men of the Burgue had known that the people of Tirnanoc are made of steel like this, a holy rage like this, they would have trembled to come. I know I am trembling now. I don’t know if it’s from the pain. I don’t know if it’s from the almost-dying. 

All I know is that she saved my life, and that she is fighting to save my life.

She catches me watching. She tosses her bow aside because her quiver is empty, and flies over to land beside me. 

“You’re bleeding!” Her shouting is dim in the din of battle.

I say nothing. I answer instead by taking up my rifle, by aiming over her shoulder, and blowing a bullet through the soldier behind her. She twists and looks over her shoulder. She turns back to me, eyes hard, and nods. She understands: fight now, talk later.

So like this, back to back on the bloodied walls, with my rifle and knife and her wings and knife, we fight. I save her life, then she saves mine. We fight.

-

It is not a long battle. I was right. The Pact force — though alarmingly well supplied with ammunition — was a small one, one made for hit-and-runs. The moment the tide of the battle began to turn, they too turned, and fled.

I do not know the time. The sky is grey with smoke, and the air stings of ash. Medic tents have long since been set up, but I am too husked out to move. I am seated still on the rampart with my back against the wall, and I sink into the stones. I close my eyes, and sigh.

“Don’t fall asleep.” The sparrowguard is still here. My eyes are closed, but I remember there’s a gash over her cheek and down her jaw. Somehow, in the midst of all the fighting, she’d lost a boot.

“I’ll sleep if I want to.”

“I’m not carrying you if you fall asleep.”

“And why would I need carrying?”

“Your wounds, faan-troigh. You need to get to one of your medic tents.”

“You calling me faan-troigh is a deeper wound than anything the Pact could deal me.”

The fae snorts. She shifts. I hear and feel her settle beside me.

“You too, Miss. Get your wounds tended to. You’ve a right nasty cut.”

There’s a pause. Maybe the fae is considering it. For a drawn moment, she says nothing at all, and does not move. And then, “Vignette.”

I open my eyes and look over. “What?”

“Vignette,” she repeats. She is looking away, at something by the field, or at nothing at all. “My name is Vignette.”

I see. Her name. I close my eyes again, and cannot stop the smile stretching over my lips.

“It doesn’t suit you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Then again, maybe it does.”

Even with my eyes closed, I can see her scowl. “You really do need a medic.”

“I’m fine. Let them tend to the other men, first.”

“You’re their Sergeant.”

“And those that lead should always be prepared to go last.”

“Is that how it is in the Burgue?”

“Isn’t it like that here, too?”

Vignette — not woman, not fae, not sparrowguard — says nothing. I do not mind it. Silence brews between us, and I settle into it. 

“Your story the other night,” she begins, quiet. “It wasn’t half bad.”

“Even though you kept complaining about it?”

“The _story_ wasn’t half bad,” she repeats. “Your storytelling skills, on the other hand.”

I laugh. The laughter cuts into my shoulder, and I cough, and wince. Vignette swears under her breath, in the growl of her own tongue, and pressed closer. She sets a steadying hand on my chest.

“Don’t move so much, idiot.”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault now?”

“It is.” I smile. “You should be ashamed of yourself, and take penance.”

“Ah.” Wind brims in my chest to see that she is smiling, too. “Want me to cut down some lumber and pile it over you, is that it?”

“Now that would be a sight.” I want to laugh again. “A pyre fit for a king, all for a faan-troigh.”

“It would never happen.”

“You’re the one that suggested it.”

“You don’t even know what the pyre is for. And no, it’s not for the dead.”

I turn and lean my temple against the stones of the wall. I watch Vignette until she looks back at me, and then, smiling, I say, “Tell me what it’s for. Tell me about the sun-stones. Tell me about everything.”

And here, in the sanctuary of our ashen corner, on the height of the wall apart from all else, she does. In the softeness of our solitude, she tells me everything.

Saam-fuin translates to the Summer’s Sleep, because the summer days are passing surely, slowly away. Winter is soon to follow. Summer, Vignette says, crawls underneath the horizon, where there is a great cave and a great spring. There, with moss for blankets, she curls up and falls asleep.

The pyre, she explains, is for the ritual of fire to come. Heat is needed to guard against the chill. Light is needed to chase away the night. The pyre is to be built as high as can be built, and the fire is to be lit for three days and three nights, and over the course of those three nights, fairishyn fly and dance over the peak of its flames.

“Magic is thick around the sun-stones.” Vignette’s voice is like the twisting of incense smoke. It pulls me in. It renders me hooked. She is a much better storyteller than I. “And on the nights of Saam-fuin, with the great pyre burning, the magic is thick enough to brim into the wings of any fae who dance that night.”

“The wings?”

“That’s where magic is kept. That, and the eyes. It’s where our memories are kept, too.”

“In the eyes?”

“No, the wings. It’s why Haruspex read the veins of our wings when divining our future, because everything we ever were or have done is kept there, etched in like ink on parchment.”

I smile. It is a faraway thing. “That sounds lovely.”

“And with the magics of the flame and the sun-stones hoarded into our wings, we will have warmth and strength enough to keep us dancing for months, and months.”

I laugh, but it is a soft thing. “That sounds _very_ lovely.”

I am drifting. I can tell. The edges of my understanding is blurring. Vignette leans in closer, and like this, I can taste the crispness of her breath. I can appraise the upward curl of her lashes.

“Don’t fall asleep,” she warns, but her voice is gentle, so gentle, like some lullaby. So I am not reprimanded. I am only lulled. I smile and say, “Wake me if I do,” and I think she smiles. It is hard to say. My eyes are sliding shut.

I know how my words sound, like I am asking her to stay, to watch over me. And perhaps I am.

It would be the loveliest thing of all, I think, if I were to wake with her by my side.


	4. 3 days; Vignette

_(Three days before I forget, in the breath and warmth of Philo’s tent, a man in a box sings us a tender song.)_

-

I insist that Philo finish the rest of the story from memory. And wincing, laughing, he does. 

It’s horrendous, of course. He forgets entire subplots, and has to jump back in the story to finish them. He jumbles up the names of places and the names of tribes, and leaves out an integral part of the ritual that would’ve tied up the ending of an arc. 

I am left baffled, lost, vexed.

He laughs as he apologizes, and speaks with his hands, his animated hands puppeteering as the heroine, or the hero, or the villain. He looks at me, clear eyed, and asks me things like, ‘Where was I? Did that make sense? I’m forgetting something important here. Martyr’s noose. What am I forgetting?’

And I am left charmed, endeared, rapt.

Four days after the assault on the Fort, the heroine is reunited with her father, the father she’s spent the entirety of the story looking for. He is on his deathbed. And then, with tears in their eyes and love on their lips, he passes. Quietly, sweetly, he passes. Philo’s finally reached the end of story.

I weep. I swipe my hands over and over my eyes to catch the tears, and light shudders over my wings with my sobs. 

Philo is there. He guides my cheek against his shoulder and rubs circles — a soothing spell — against my back. He does not touch my wings. I think, maybe, he is being considerate.

When the tears have thinned, and my breath has steadied, I pull from his warmth and weight and say, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not crying from the story, but from your atrocious rendition.”

He bares his throat and laughs.

I find myself watching, saying nothing at all. I watch his adam’s apple bob and bob. I watch the flash of his teeth, and the crinkle of the corners of his eyes.

It occurs to me, then, that I am no longer looking at him like prey, or like a prisoner. I am looking just to look, just to see, just to catch him looking _back_.

One day, three days before Saam-fuin, Philo finds me in Mima Aine’s garden and says to me, “You’re good with your hands.”

I look up. I am bent by a row of spriggan herbs with my hands wrist-deep in black soil. 

Philo is silhouetted by the afternoon sun, but I can tell his cap is crooked. His sleeves are rolled up. He’s leaning against the vine’d trellis like maybe he owns it, owns the earth, and it is an easy spread that I would have read as conceit days before. 

Now, I only find myself watching. Now, my gaze lingers.

“What?”

“You’re good with your hands,” he repeats. “Judging by your dagger work. And by,” he gestures at my hands in the dirt.

I wipe sweat from my brows with my arm and say, “Observant, for a Burguish man.”

“One of my only talents, I’m afraid.” He smiles. “Would you deign to help a poor Burguish man out?”

“Perhaps,” but I’m already rising to my feet. I can already feel the stretch of a smile over my lips. “Depends on the kind of help.”

“It’s simple enough work. Just need you to find a thing and push it back into place.”

I quirk a brow. “The fabled precise use of language by you Burguishmen never ceases to amaze me.”

“You’ll get what I mean when you see it,” he says, so I say nothing else while I clap the dirt and dust from my hands, as I duck out of the gardens to follow him.

He leads me to his tent. His room in the stone keep had been blown open by the Pact assault, so now he spends his nights in a tent underneath the crooked arm of a swallow’s tree. The tent’s fabric has been bleached by the sun and yellowed by dirt. 

Inside, the space is warm, cozy. It is small — for a Sergeant’s tent. He’s afforded the luxury of a large rug, full of patterns on patterns, all earthy reds and browns. There is a large metal-enforced chest. There is a wood-framed bed.

There is a wide, wide table spread full of parchments and plans, and decorated with weapons, bullets, belts. By the corner of the table is something like a burnished bronze horn connected to a large wooden box. I have never seen the like.

“This,” Philo explains, “is a gramophone.”

I look at it this way and that. “Is it meant to sound itself?” It’s a battle-horn, perhaps, or a warning signal.

“That’s not too off the mark, actually.”

“What is it, then?”

“I’ll show you.” His smile brightens his eyes. He holds up a finger. “_After_ we fix it. Finicky thing.”

I nod. “What do you need?”

He swivels the box of the gramophone around and pops open the back, and inside, the guts of the machine are cylinders and spirals and points, all metal on metal. It’s a wonder of a maze. 

“My hands are too big,” he explains, as he leans down and in to peer. “And my fingers too short. Can’t reach the stylus at the back.” He looks at me and smiles. “But I’m betting you can.”

“The stylus?”

“Looks like a silver pin, almost. It’s misaligned at the moment, so the gramophone can’t be wound proper.”

I squint into the box. Past the rows of cylinders and wires, a sliver of silver glints.

“I see it.”

“You’ll need to nudge it back up into its socket. It should click into place.”

“Couldn’t you find a stick for this?”

“And risk getting a piece of it stuck in there?”

I say nothing. Philo and I are pressed in close, with the warmth of his cheek a hovering breath away from mine, and like this, it is hard to say anything at all.

“Why’d you go breaking it in the first place?” But even as I ask, even as I reprimand, I slot my hand into the dark of the box. I strain and stretch my fingers. I screw them into the cramp of the metal mysteries. 

There’s a smile to his voice when he says, “That’s me, Philo the mastermind. I broke this machine on purpose just to get you alone with me.”

I snort. 

“Creep.”

“That’s mastermind creep, to you.”

And then, with a grunt and an upward nudge, my fingers snap the stylus back into place.

Music crackles.

I jerk back. I twitch my hand away and out from the box. My eyes are wide. A black disc is spinning on the top of the box, and sounds are stringing out of the horn like crinkled paper being smoothed out. A man — voice like a slow dance on a lazy summer’s night — croons.

“It’s,” singing, confusing, _wondrous_. I lean back in, arrested.

Philo is beside me. The nearness of him radiates warmth. He’s craning in on the box too, except, except: when I turn to look at him, he’s not looking at the box at all. He’s looking at me. His smile is a tender, tender thing.

My eyes tick to his lips. His eyes tick to my lips.

_The very thought of you_, the man sings. _And I forget to do_.

_The little ordinary things that everyone ought to do_. 

And like this, to the tune of daydreams, of kings, of how foolish this may seem — Philo leans in, and I lean in. We kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> song used - https://youtu.be/HcRQiNHrsoQ


	5. The Last Day

**Philo**

_(The last day, the day she forgets, we dance and make love under the flickering shadows of the great pyre.)_

_(And before I can tell her that I love her, she forgets. She forgets.)_

-

Even the Burguishmen can tell. They wake from their sleep and step from their rooms and tents, and are quiet, subdued, wearing a strange kind of reverence.

They can tell that today, on the day of Saam-fuin, something like honey clings about the air. It is thick, sweet, cloying. The scars on my back tingle, like someone has smeared mint over my skin.

More and more fae-folk have been arriving. There must be hundreds, by now. All of them are dressed in their finest skins and furs, though Vignette had pressed a smile against my shoulder earlier and said, “When the dancing begins, clothes are shed one by one ‘til we’re nearly bare. Some even prefer to dance right naked.”

I quirk a brow, but I’m smiling. “A fearsome sight to behold, dozens of naked fae flitting about.”

She punches my shoulder. “Who says you get to behold anything at all?”

“Don’t I?” My eyes tick down over her, and she catches my gaze and tries not to laugh. She pulls me by my collar instead and drags me into the dark of some corner, behind a stone wall. And there, on the tips of her toes, she kisses me. I touch her lower back, and she bites my lower lip.

“Burguishmen aren’t allowed,” she says, warns. “So wait at the bottom of the hill, in the thicket. Make sure you can’t be seen.”

“And if I am?”

“I’ll have no choice but to toss you onto the pyre.”

“The first human sacrifice in fae history.”

“And what a poor sacrifice you’d make, with your skin and bones.”

I press my smile against the crook of her neck, and when she laughs against the tickle of it, I kiss along the line of that neck, then up to her jaw, and back to her lips. I don’t know how long we kiss for. All I know is the burning in my lungs and a need in my stomach, and a shaking in my fingers because I want to trace her lines, all her lines.

Somewhere, a soldier shouts to the rhythm of marching. I pull away, panting.

Vignette’s eyes on me are blurry. Her lips are bruised red. She is beautiful.

So, I touch her cheek and say, “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

She smiles a slow thing. Her voice is quiet when she says, admits, “So are you.”

That night, after my duties, I leave behind my weapons and excuse myself from the fort, and make my winding way to the sun-stone hill. It’s slow going in the dark, but the roaring pyre is ever a guiding lighthouse. At the base of the hill, with the stones towering high above me, I tuck into a dense thicket and settle there. I settle there to wait, and to watch, and to be bewitched.

The dancing begins with the heartbeat of drums. 

The rhythm is slow, solemn, deep and dignified as a wise old man. Singing drifts over the smoke. Bells shake again, then again, and again. On the hill, behind the border of stones, I see fae-bodies swaying to and fro. Their figures are black smears against the blaze of the fire. They raise their arms. The first fae takes to the air.

The whistle of a pan flute soars. The melody follows the fae as her wings beat and beat, and carry her up, up, to the utmost peak of the flames. There, she turns. She presents her wings to the fires. She dances a circle around the heat, then another, and another, and the drums — heartbeat by heartbeat — quicken. The rhythm is that of a march, then that of a canter, then that of a gallop, of children racing down a hill, of wild celebration and wild abandon. 

The fae’s wings catch on ferocious light, golden like the sun. The fae-folk cry out in unison. The ritual begins in earnest.

Dozens of fae take to the air. They bob along the heat of the fire, much like fireflies against the allure of light. Some, when they reach the peak, swallow that light into their wings. 

I know now why Burguishmen, why people like me, are not allowed to witness this.

Their stitched gold wings, patched by light, is like looking at a stained glass miracle. This, here, now, is like looking upon a holiness.

I see Vignette. The hem of her dress flows far below her as she flies. She carries herself easy as wind up to the peak, and when she dances, her eyes are closed. She rolls her head and shoulders to the swell of the music. She twists and twirls, quick as a sparrow. 

I realize, with a blow like a sudden drop, that I would die for her.

I would risk burning on a pyre, just to watch her dance on and on.

-

Vignette finds me in the thicket, waiting for her. Her wings have swallowed up light; gold bleeds along the veins of her wings and floods the patchwork patterns. She throws herself into me and shudders, and laughs. She has long shed her heavy dress. I fold my arms around her and kiss warmth back into her shoulders.

“Thank you,” is all I can muster.

“You’re welcome,” is her reply. She smiles.

Gingerly, reverently, I ping the tips of my fingers over her wing. Light ripples at my touch. “It doesn’t——hurt, or anything?”

“No. It’s warm. Hot, actually.”

“It really doesn’t hurt?”

“No. The heat ebbs out naturally over the next few days.” Then she grins, all teeth. “But I’ve seen fairishyn get too drunk and lose their heads, and slip on their control. Then they let the heat out all at once.”

“Sounds explosive.”

“Oh, it is.” Vignette laughs. “Wings have been known to blow clean off.”

I frown. My grip around her tightens. “If you explode on me, I will be very cross.”

Vignette laughs again. Her arms are looped over my shoulders, and the long line of her neck is bare. In the moonlight, her skin sheens silver. “If I do,” she says, “hold me tight. Hold me together.”

My frown softens, and fades, and I’m smiling a soft thing when I say, “Like this?”

I tuck her against the warmth of my body. She shakes her head. Her eyes hood. “Tighter.”

So, under the flickering shadows of the sun-stone pyre, on the grass, in the thicket, I hold her tight, tighter. We press into each other. We cling, then make love. For as long as the night is dark, we make love.

-

I wake to the warmth of Vignette’s arms, and to the sound of explosions.

I startle. I roll up. In the waning dark and down in the distance, Fort Tarlington is ablaze. I don’t understand. I don’t hear the whistle of bombs dropping. I don’t hear gunfire, or cannon booms. Vignette is awake and up, and her eyes are already edge-sharp.

“The Pact?”

“No.” My jaw clenches. “This doesn’t make sense.”

I find my clothes and wrench them on. I’m racing back down to the fort with my jacket barely half worn. Vignette is close behind, still tightening her belts. The buzz of her wings is an anchoring sound. 

The stone walls, when we near, is choked by smoke. Wailing thickens, and swells. On and on, something detonates. A little ways past the gates, I see a group of my men pressed back to back. Their rifles are drawn but pointed upwards; confusion taints their every movement. There is no clear target for them to shoot.

“Report!” I holler.

The men turn to me. As they shout, “Sergeant!” And as they shout, “We don’t know, we don’t know!” A fae flits out of the smoke and descends upon the group. He’s come to join the fight, but his hands are bare. He holds no weapons.

His wings sharpen on light, bright and brighter, bright enough to hurt. Vignette behind me cuts out a breath. She shouts. It is too late.

The wings shatter. Flames burst. The force of it is enough to crunch into bone, to cut into flesh, and my men are hurled through the air and over the earth. A detached arm lands by my feet. Blood sprays in the aftermath of the scorch. 

The fae is dead. So are half my men.

Vignette, sobbing, swears and swears in her tongue. “They’ve gone mad!”

Furiously, desperately, I connect the dots: heat magic released all at once, droves of unknown fae arriving for the festival. It was the Pact after all. Pact fae. We are such fools.

And then I remember: Vignette.

I turn to her and grip her arm. “You need to leave.”

Her cheeks are smeared slick with tears. “What?”

“If this keeps up, my men are going to start shooting at any fae they see, even if they’re not Pact. You need to leave. _Now._”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“I’ll find you after.”

“I’m _not_——”

“Vignette. _Please._” And then a bullet clips past my neck. Pain blooms sharp.

From the shroud of the dark and of the smoke, soldiers. Pact soldiers. They’re on the walls. They took advantage of the chaos of fae detonating the inner fort and scaled the wall in silence. Now, they line the height. Now, they raise their rifles and take aim.

Vignette and I are standing out in the open courtyard. We have no weapons. We are entirely exposed. I do not think. (There is no time, no time to think.)

I throw my arms out and cover Vignette with the breadth of my body, facing down the guns. My heart is in my ears. I know I am going to die. But it does not matter.

I’d already decided I could die for the woman behind me.

They fire. My world topples.

There is no pain. I haven’t been shot. Vignette behind me had roared and shoved me, shoved me onto my front, and I am splayed with my cheek cutting into the dirt. When I look up, I see that Vignette has taken flight. She is tracking straight for the Pact soldiers, zipping through the air, wings beating on fury.

Those wings are beginning to glow.

Vignette, I cry, and cry. No. Please. Don’t.

She doesn’t hear me, chooses not to hear me. Gunfire pops and pops, and she twirls out of the way. Her wings blaze iron-hot, gold-hot. Please. Please.

And then, with a clap, light explodes.

And then, with a clap, my world stutters to a stop.

***

**Vignette**

_(. . . .)_

-

The world spins. I roll over onto my hands and puke.

Someone touches my back and steadies me, and coos soft, soft things, but my wings are like they are lit on fire. I have never known pain like this, pain that sears into my nerve-endings, that grips me, that owns me in the core of my being. There is no escaping it.

I rock back, faint. Someone catches me. I think I lose consciousness. I’m not sure.

When I wake again, I wake in the arms of a man I do not know. 

He is holding me tight. He is gripping me like he is trying to keep me from breaking apart. (Distantly, I recall myself saying, “Hold me tight. Hold me together.”)

His hair is brown like his eyes. Those eyes are red-rimmed from crying. There’s an ugly cut on the side of his neck that bleeds and bleeds, but he pays it no mind.

“Vignette,” he says, again and again, like a chant, like a prayer. But I don’t know this man. This man is human.

Smoke surrounds us. Yelling surrounds us. We are in the middle of a battlefield.

I shove the man, and stagger away and to my feet.

“Vignette,” he says again.

“Get away.” My voice is hoarse.

“Vignette. You’re alive.” He reaches for me.

“Stay _away_!”

He jerks. His expression crumples. My vision clears. Behind the man, drawing nearer to us from the air, is Mima Aine and the other sparrowguards. They approach, and land beside me. Their hands on my shoulders anchor me.

“Sergeant,” Mima says. “We’ve been looking for Vignette. It’s not safe here.”

The man — the sergeant — fists and unfists his hands. His eyes bore into me, and for a long, long while, he says nothing at all.

Mima beats her wings. “_Sergeant!_”

Slowly, through gritted teeth, the man says, “No. You’re right. It’s not safe.”

“We must depart before your men turn on us.”

“Yes.”

“Vignette. Come.”

I turn to follow, and the world spins again. I see only white light for a breath, and two, and the man reaches out again and steadies me. I wince. I snatch my arm from his grip.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Vignette, I——”

“Leave me be!”

I cannot fly. My wings are so weak, so weak. The other sparrowguards sling my arms over their shoulders and carry my weight up into the air and away. We pull from the ground, leaving the sergeant behind. He says nothing. He makes not a sound.

I do not look back.

-

I rock in and out of consciousness, so I don’t know how far we fly for, and for how long. When we land, we land in a rocky grove of winter trees, amongst the jagged stones and ashen pebbles. We rest. I cover my face with my hands and shudder, and breathe. It is all I can do to bear the pain.

I don’t know why. I don’t know why, but there is a pain in my chest, too.

Where my wings are gnashing teeth and edges and knives, my chest is a hole like a great gaping mouth. And that mouth wails, and wails, like a lover that has lost.

It hurts.

-

A fortnight passes. 

And one night, by the light of the moon, Mima Aine dismisses me from her detachment. 

“Have I displeased you, Mima?”

“No, child.”

“Failed you?”

“No, child.”

“Then why?” I fist my hands.

Mima Aine smiles a sad smile and touches my cheek. “I wish I knew. If I did, then I could help you.” And that is when I understand

Over the course of these two weeks, I have been unwell of spirit. I have been sick of heart, and forlorn. Because of this cloud that shadows me and darkens me, I am led to distraction. I am weaker, somehow. I am smaller, somehow.

“I release you, child, that you may go and recover your light.”

“But,” and I pause. I try again. “Do you have any idea—?”

“No. All I know is that you let lose the heat you had gathered on Saam-fuin, likely to protect someone. That is all I know.”

“—That man.”

“The Sergeant. Aye.”

“Was he and I—?”

Mima Aine shakes her head. “If you were, you shared it not with me.”

I nod slowly, slowly. Mima Aine smiles again and kisses both my cheeks. “Go where the pull is strongest, Vignette. Your memories may be gone, but the heart is still there. It still beats. It still lives.”

I nod again. This time, when I look back at Mima Aine, I can find it in myself to smile back.

After I have packed, after I have said my goodbyes, Mima asks me where I will go.

“Northwest, I think.”

“The mountain ranges.” She nods. “But you abhor the cold.”

“I do.” I frown, because I also don’t quite understand it myself.

“You feel a pull there?”

“Not——exactly.” I take a breath. “But the holy library of the Mimasery is there, deep in the face of the mountains.”

“I didn’t realize you had a love of books.”

“Neither did I.” But somewhere, in the echoes of my once-memory, I recall a story of a daughter, a daughter who had lost her father. I think there is a story like it, tucked away, in the dark of the holy library, and maybe if I read it, maybe if I traced my fingers over the ink, I will remember.

I will remember why it hurts.

So there is where I will go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> caffeine courses thru my veins. unlimited power. 
> 
> maybe i'll add another short chapter after this. who knows. only the caffeine knows.


End file.
